Grace Dent: ‘I’m uncomfortable admitting to my food guilty pleasure’

Grace Dent is shameless about her sweet tooth. Her face settles into an unrepentant smirk as her Celebrity MasterChef co-host, Giorgio Locatelli, pantomimes his “shock at how much she loves dessert”. When they’re tasting, he says: “Grace won’t just take one spoonful. It will be one, two, three…” – she bats off his lightweight guesstimate – “Ooooh, five easily.” Bantering away, side by side over video call, Dent tells me that the famous contestants on the cooking show “can go a long way to charming Giorgio by keeping their benches clean, binning the potato peel and scrubbing their pans”. He confirms with a strict nod. “But with me it’s all about the sugar. You can get straight to my heart with a trifle. Giorgio will say, ‘Grace! That’s just whipped cream and whiskey!’ To which I’d counter: ‘And what is wrong with that?’ Nothing better than a spoonful of syllabub.” Dent’s northern vowels make a gleeful splat of the word “syllabub”. It’s this blend of the earthy tone, lip-smacking vocabulary and naughtiness that has made her so watchable since she replaced the disgraced Gregg Wallace on MasterChef in 2025. Well, that and what she calls her “high-camp matriarch wardrobe”: Pop Art beehive, chunky gold jewellery and heels. They work brilliantly with her distinctively long, malleable features which she once joked make her look like “a claymation witch”. “When I got the job, I was determined to channel the glamour of Joan Collins in Dynasty, in great gowns and sparkly heels,” she says. “Ambitious food and dressing up go together, don’t they? My stylist and hairdresser put together outfits designed to make people go ‘Ooooh hello’” – her Joan Collins has drifted into Kenneth Williams – “and watch this space. Because my clothes are only going to get stranger and wilder.” Dent wanted to channel the ‘glamour of Joan Collins in Dynasty’ (Photo: BBC/Shine TV) Her cartoon costumes are offset by Locatelli’s classic Italian chef-chic. “He always looks fab in his handmade suits,” Dent faux-swoons. He keeps himself clean too, whereas Dent is prone to swooshing a big sleeve into somebody’s custard or dripping sauces onto her chest: “If you ever see my with my hand here, looking like I’m swearing an oath of allegiance” – she claps a palm across her bosom – “it’ll be because I’m covered in gravy.” Locatelli rolls his eyes as she continues: “In this series you might have noticed I started wearing a dress the other way around – cinched up with a belt- halfway through an episode. That’s because I spilled katsu curry down it.” Another twinkling tut from Locatelli, who has embraced his role of “bad cop to Grace’s good cop”. When it comes to giving feedback to the celebrity contestants, Dent knows when to hold back – and when to be brutally honest. “I try to get a good measure of who I’m dealing with very quickly,” she says. “When I when we begin, I look at the list and I try to work out who then may be a little bit more up for me being pithy and who might find criticism more difficult. “The sports people seem to want the clock on, the timing hitting perfectly all the time, because obviously their life is run by timing. I would love to say that the comedians come in and just laugh along when things go wrong but…” She makes a face. “With some of them you do have to tread quite carefully.” Born in Hampshire in 1973 but raised in a pebble-dashed terraced house in Carlisle, Dent is the daughter of a cleaner and a serviceman. Her father was a Scouser, and she knows we can still catch the echo of his accent in her laugh. Dent knows when to hold back – and when to be brutally honest (Photo: BBC/Shine TV) “Liverpool genes are like a rogue pair of red knickers in the washing machine with your whites. They leave a trace,” she wrote in her chewy 2020 memoir, Hungry: A Memoir of Wanting More. It’s a book in which she says her earliest memory is of walking away from the NAAFI with him in 1976 – him brandishing a bar of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut while his “only little girl” clutched a little packet of Buttons. The safe comfort of that scene was slightly undone by Dent’s discovery – at 14 – that she wasn’t his only little girl after all. He’d left two daughters (and a son) behind from his previous marriage in Liverpool. Dent began reviewing restaurants for the Evening Standard in 2012 and became The Guardian’s restaurant critic in 2017. The girl raised on “beige food” became a soufflé-sniffing gourmet – without losing that sweet tooth. In a recent review of Mayfair’s Chez Rose she argued that Brits have been “scared off anchovies by whiskery, bitter, tinned monstrosities hurled over bad salade niçoise” but urged us to try, instead, “fat, glossy, smooth, salty” Cantabrian anchovies, which slip into her mouth “sweet and naughty as chocolate profiteroles”. Locatelli, however, grew up with fine dining in his genes. Born in 1963 in northern Italy he developed his minimalist cooking style at the feet of his Michelin-starred uncle. He served as a sniper in the army (contestants beware – he says he’s still a good shot) and moved to London in 1986 to join the kitchen at The Savoy. He headed kitchens at Olivo and Zafferano in the capital and earned his first Michelin star at the latter in 1999. Three years later, he and his English wife, Plaxy, opened the celebrated Locanda Locatelli, where they served an elegant Italian menu to everyone from Madonna to Tony Blair (U2 apparently ate pasta in the kitchen when the place was full) until closing suddenly last year, reportedly due to a hike in rent. Dent says there is a culture clash between them at times, which shows up most prominently in their love of coffee. “Giorgio has a little espresso in the morning because he’s very Italian,” says Dent. “Whereas I’m still drinking Gold Blend by the half pints at about eight o’clock at night.” Locatelli and Dent’s tastes make for quite a culture clash (Photo: BBC/Shine TV) But her delight in a snack appears to have rubbed off on him. He admits that now, when he goes back to Italy, he “always takes three or four packets of chocolate biscuits” with him. McVitie’s chocolate digestives, I guess? Dent snorts. “No,” he says. “I get them from Fortnum & Mason, for £28 a tin. They’re called Chocolossus and they are the closest thing to evidence of a higher power.” He adds: “You know, there’s no culture of chocolate in Italy really. For nine months of the year it’s just too hot. So it is something that has been introduced more in the past 20 years.” I’m equally tickled to hear that one of the Italian chef’s favourite treats is the quintessentially English slice of toast with marmite and a good cup of tea. Marmite “used to make my head swivel when I first tried it”, he admits. “It’s an acquired taste.” Dent’s most decadent treat surprises me almost as much. It’s not sugary. “I never feel comfortable admitting it,” she winces, “but I do like a little bit of caviar.” She smiles. Although she recognises that “on some level it is just salty fishy gunk”, she’s a sucker for “the whole dainty ceremony of it. The little blini? The cream? The tiny pops? There’s something about it all that makes me feel like a proper lady.” Locatelli tilts his head, endeared, before they laugh. “Of course,” laments Dent, “on MasterChef we try to keep the budgets down. So I don’t get to indulge myself very often.” The final of ‘Celebrity MasterChef‘ is on BBC One tomorrow night at 8pm